Tarot Tales: B is for Balance (Temperance)

Welcome to the 2021 A to Z Blogging Challenge! My theme this year is Tarot Tales. I am making a selection of folktales, legends, and other traditional stories that correspond to tarot cards. Storytelling and tarot go well together. Do other stories come to mind? Let me know in the comments!

The card: Temperance

Meanings: Balance, harmony, equilibrium, peace. Things taken in moderation, managing emotions, staying away from extremes. Also stands for mediation, and patiently connecting things that seem to be incompatible. 

Selection process: Water plays an important part in the imagery of this card; water in tarot represents emotions. The figure pouring water from one cup to the other represents emotional balance, which I was trying to find in a story, preferably with also water-based motifs.

The story: Sunset Lad

Origin: Armenia

Summary: A young man swears at the Sun for going up and down, and the Sun's mother punishes him with a curse: he dies every morning at sunrise, and only comes back to life when the sun sets. He flees into the wilderness to protect his family from seeing him die every day, and greatly regrets his actions. Eventually he sets out to seek forgiveness from the Sun's mother. He climbs down a well, and meets a giantess who agrees to help him. She shows the young man an underwater passage that leads to the Sun's home, and gives him two cups, one empty, one full of water. When he finds the Sun's mother, he begs her forgiveness, and eventually she agrees to lift the curse. He fills his empty cup, and pours out the other in return, then goes back to the giantess. The giantess bathes him in the Sun's magic water, and the curse is lifted. 

By the time he returns home to his wife and son, the wife has married someone called Sunrise Man. Like civilized adults, they all go on a picnic, and they let the woman choose. She chooses Sunset Lad, her original husband, and they live happily ever after. 

Sources & notes: You can read this story here.

Are you nocturnal? Are you diurnal? Do you keep your night and day in balance? If you had to choose, which one would you keep?